Armando Iannucci and his guests return with a heady mix of topical sketches, chat and lots of lies, in front of a live audience. Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive is a topical, events-driven radio comedy hosted by comedy guru Iannucci recorded in front of a live audience. With the sketchability of The Now Show, combined with the going-off-on-a-mad...

Listeners will learn about the often painful and frequently distasteful educational practices that our ancestors employed and explore some unusual teaching methods used today. Find out about the Neolithic cave school, the English charity boarding school in Dickensian times, where pupils shared their boarding rooms with chickens and turkeys, and the...

'There's a new boy at school called Louis. Louis sits next to me and I look after him. He's not quite like the rest of us. Sometimes I wonder what he's thinking about. He often just sits and stares at the wall. If I ask him what he's looking at he says, 'Looking at' and carries on looking.' This introduction to the issue of autism shows how - throu...

A fourth volume of highlights from recent series of The News Quiz, presented by chairman Simon Hoggart. Since 1977, BBC Radio 4's funniest and quirkiest game show has been answering questions and offering wit and wisdom on global happenings, national news and quite frankly pathetic parochial events

Crime reporter Rosie Gilmour returns from hiding in Bosnia to a story of a brutal execution. University lecturer Tom Mahoney was shot at point-blank range; the killing has all the signs of a hit. But who would want to kill a retired lecturer? Rosie throws herself into the investigation, looking for a witness that has gone missing. A witness that mi...

Featuring: The White Box of Great Bardfield, Tales of Montmartre, The Great Bank Robbery and The Mystery of the Fake Neddie Seagoons. Anarchic, ground-breaking and hilariously inventive, The Goon Show re-shaped comedy and set new standards in the genre. The mix of brilliant wordplay, mental slapstick and surreal clowning ensures the popularity of S...

Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as 'Human Computers', calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts, these 'colored computers' used pencil and paper to write the equa...

There's no getting away from it. From whichever angle, Death is a horrible, inescapable business. But someone's got to do it. So if Death decides to take a well-earned moment to uncover the meaning of life and discover himself in the process, then there is going to be a void of specific dimensions that needs to be occupied, particularly so when the...

Sal used to know his place with his adoptive gay father, their loving Mexican American family, and his best friend, Samantha. But it's senior year, and suddenly Sal is throwing punches, questioning everything, and realizing he no longer knows himself. If Sal's not who he thought he was, who is he? This humor-infused, warmly humane look at universal...

The fourth book in the award-winning GEEK GIRL series. Harriet Manners knows many things. She knows that toilet roll was invented by the Chinese in 600 AD. She knows that a comet's tail always points away from the sun. And she knows that the average healthy heart beats 70 times per minute. Even when it's broken. But she knows nothing about making n...

Dr Temperance Brennan spends her life working amongst the decomposed, the mutilated and the skeletal. So the two-days-dead body she is called to examine holds little to surprise her. Until she discovers that the man is John Lowery, an ex-soldier who was apparently killed in Vietnam in 1968. So who is buried in Lowery's grave. The case takes Tempe t...

The man they call 'Britain's Funniest Milton' stars in his smash-hit Sony Award-winning show "Another Case Of Milton Jones" co-starring Tom Goodman-Hill ('Ideal'), Lucy Montgomery ('Down The Line') & Dan Tetsell ('Mongrels') In each episode, Milton is a complete and utter expert at something - Astronomer, Diplomat, Undercover Journalist, Celebr...

Featuring: The Phantom Head Shaver, The Last Emperor, Drums Along the Mersey and The Mummified Priest. Anarchic, ground-breaking and hilariously inventive, The Goon Show re-shaped comedy and set new standards in the genre. The mix of brilliant wordplay, mental slapstick and surreal clowning ensures the popularity of Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers an...

Patrick Troughton stars as the Doctor in the soundtrack of this classic TV story from 1968, in which he finds the humanoid Gonds enslaved by the monstrous, crystalline Krotons. Along with his companions, Jamie and Zoe, the Doctor befriends the Gonds and enters the lair of their enemies. Can he halt the years of tyrrany and also escape with his life...

When the annual school science fair comes round, Mr Cartright's pupils don't get to work on the Soap Factory, the Maggot Farm or the exploding Custard Tins. To their intense disgust they get the Flour Babies - sweet little six pound bags of flour that must be cared for at all times or the owner fails the project. And worse, all of them have to keep...

Armando Iannucci and his guests return with a heady mix of topical sketches, chat and lots of lies, in front of a live audience. Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive is a topical, events-driven radio comedy hosted by comedy guru Iannucci recorded in front of a live audience. With the sketchability of The Now Show, combined with the going-off-on-a-mad...

'Hobson's Choice' (the title coming from the expression 'Hobson's choice' meaning no choice at all), set in Salford in 1880, is a comedy based around the battle of wills between a hard-headed cobbler and his defiant daughter. Henry Hobson has three daughters, good intentions and a fondness for the Moonraker's Inn. Maggie Hobson, the eldest daughter...

John Moffatt stars as the great Belgian detective in a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. Carla Lemarchant was a child of five when her mother was accused and convicted of poisoning her father, the famous painter Amyas Crale. After Caroline Crale dies in prison, Carla is sent to live with her uncle and aunt in Canada. Only on her twenty-first bir...

This original 6-part BBC Radio 4 comedy sci-fi series, written by Graham Duff and starring Mark Gatiss (League of Gentlemen) and David Warner, was first broadcast in January 2004. The year is 2099 and Professor Nebulous (Gatiss) is the director of KENT - the Key Environmental Nonjudgemental Taskforce. Nebulous runs an eco-trouble shooting organisat...

Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical front line. Prompted by his retirement from his full-time job in the NHS, and through his continuing work in Nepal and Ukraine, Henry has been forced to reflect more deeply about what 40 years spent handling the human brain has taught him. Moving between encounters with patients in his Lond...

Chain Reaction' is the entertaining BBC Radio 4 tag talk show where this week's guest is next week's interviewer. Famous names from the world of showbusiness choose who they would like to chat to, and must submit to being questioned in their turn the week after. In this ninth series, guests (and hosts) include Robert Llewellyn, Dave Gorman, Frank S...